Delhi Government School Teacher Manu Gulati Conferred With Martha Farrell Award 2019
2019 winner of the Martha Farrell Award for Excellence in Women’s Empowerment in the Most Promising Individual category is Manu Gulati, a Delhi Government School Teacher. A Delhi resident, Manu Gulati is a teacher for English at Delhi Government School and she is also working as a mentor teacher with Directorate of Education. Manu has been instrumental in helping young girls in receiving formal school education. She has also been working with boys and girls at Government schools in sensitising them about gender neutrality and bringing a positive change in society.
Manu also collaborates with America India Foundation’s “Market Aligned Skills Training Program”, through which she facilitates training programs for beauticians, weavers, sales girls etc in Jalandhar in Punjab, Betul in Madhya Pradesh and in Baramullah in Kashmir.
Learning that she had won the award, Manu Gulati said, “It is an honour to receive the Martha Farrell Award. I am proud that my work to ensure equitable access to education for girls and gender sensitisation with students and parents has been recognized. As a mentor-teacher, I will continue to promote holistic teaching methods that empower and instil self-confidence in girls.”
The Best Organization for Gender Equality category has been won by Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (MJAS), a women-led organization, which started as a collective of rural women and eventually transitioned into a registered organization in 2000 to fight against Violence against Women. MJAS has been working on various issues such as sex-selective abortions, communalism, casteism, witch hunting, sexual violence, domestic violence, women property rights, panchayati raj, livelihood, child rights, women leadership etc. It is currently implementing its programs in 4 blocks of Ajmer district and one block each in Tonk and Bhilwara districts of Rajasthan. It works in a total of 20 villages covering about a population of 20,000, out of which nearly 9000 are children and adolescents from SC, ST and OBC communities. In 2015, MJAS revisited its mission statement and organizational commitments and decided to work with youth in a focused manner, so that by 2025, they have enabled 300 such youth leaders, who will not just lead MJAS’s work but also facilitate and lead change in their own communities.
Rizwan Adatia, Founder of Rizwan Adatia Foundation, said, “Leading a normal life is easy for all of us, but making our every single moment a challenge to make a better place for our society and people is a great thing to do. Both Manu & Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (MJAS) have shown the dedication, expertise and sheer hard work to make our society a better place to live. I would like to wish them the best of luck for the future and congratulate them on their win in this prestigious awards programme.”
Dr Rajesh Tandon, Founder-President, PRIA, who co-sponsor the Award, said, “Both Manu & MJAS exemplify the intent behind the Martha Farrell Awards. We deliberated at length about winners in different categories. The choices were numerous and at the end, because we had to choose just one winner, it was quite a challenging task as a lot of individual and groups are coming forward to do the enormous task in Gender Equality and Women Empowerment”.
The Martha Farrell Awards were first awarded in 2017. Instituted in the memory of Dr Martha Farrell, a prominent activist for gender equality and women’s empowerment, the Award is co-sponsored by Rizwan Adatia Foundation (RAF) and Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and supported by Martha Farrell Foundation (MFF). Martha was killed in Kabul (Afghanistan) in a terrorist attack in 2015 while leading a gender training workshop for the Aga Khan Foundation. The Martha Farrell Award for Excellence in Women’s Empowerment takes forward her ideals and principles.
The award gives a prize money of INR 1,50,000 to each of the winners in two categories:
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